How to Sell Your Aging Parents’ Home (Without a Family Blowup)
Sales contingencies can wreck deals. Here’s a way around it.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1
Photo: Getty Images
Buying or selling a house can be a traumatic event, especially in today’s market where the good homes draw multiple competitive cash bids over the asking price while the tired, old residences just sit and wait for the phone to ring—which it rarely does. Sales of previously occupied homes fell in March to their slowest pace in nine months, at a time of year which is traditionally the busiest season for the real estate industry. 2026 annual sales could be up to a million less homes than the historical norm. This is not good news for anyone.
One thing even more traumatic than buying or selling a house is helping your aging, often infirm, and stubborn parents to list and sell their house. Which, of course, they call their home. Setting aside all the psychological issues and insinuations that you’re an ungrateful child who’s trying to toss them out of their lifelong residence, the fact is that the entire process basically stinks for buyers and sellers.
The best of these lousy situations is the prospect of moving your folks into a nice condo or rental apartment in a retirement committee. Nonetheless, the downsizing is very painful and there are almost as many steps backwards as forward in the discussions and negotiations leading up to the inevitable decision. Add to this perilous equation all of the angst, anger and uncertainty inherent in the best-managed sale process and one which employs—for better or worse—an experienced real estate agent, and it’s still an uncomfortable and challenging process.
It’s especially hard for seniors to get their homes into market-ready selling condition; it’s difficult and uncomfortable for them to have to be leaving the house on short-notice for showings; and—even at these late dates—many seniors may still need financial and equity assistance in order to fund their new acquisition. If they’re stuck in the middle, having not sold the old place, but needing those proceeds and possibly some additional financial help to pay for the prospective new place, the stress on all of the parties is terrible and unrelenting.
But, as any good entrepreneur knows, there’s nothing like someone else’s pain and problems to create a new opportunity for an innovative solution. The best entrepreneurs see what everyone else has seen but think what no one else has thought. In this case, the primary goal was to get rid of as much as possible of the fear, uncertainty, and friction in the sales process and, at the same time, add more flexibility and leverage for the seller.
That’s why the QuickBuy program was created by some young Chicago entrepreneurs. It originally began as an adjunct to an ongoing senior living relocation program where, in case after case, the folks anxious to move into their new living space had the delays and complications of selling their old place hanging over their heads. While the QuickBuy program started with a focus on assisting nursing homes and self-help facilities which were looking to recruit seniors, it expanded over the years into a service for all home sellers and the business has grown exponentially since then.
It’s basically a B2B service now offered as a convenient tool by various partners across the country including large brokerages, mortgage companies, and real estate portals to their own clients who are trying to sell their homes. It’s designed to eliminate a great deal of the angst and aggravation inherent in the sales process and, at the same time, give the sellers some support and confidence in their negotiations to acquire their new living quarters.
And, just to be clear, having the QuickBuy solution in place actually gives some comfort and assurance to the parties on the other side of any deal because it essentially eliminates the second worst contingency in any offer to buy a new home—the requirement that the prospective buyer sell their old home. The worst contingency, of course, is that the buyers need to secure mortgage financing to make the purchase which is extra hard to come by if they’re still on the hook for their old home.
The QuickBuy process is straightforward and offers two options, Immediate Offer and Advantage. QuickBuy Immediate Offer is designed for unlisted properties. It provides a single settlement offer that allows the seller to close on the home based on their preferred timeline. QuickBuy Advantage is available for all homes, whether listed or unlisted. It is a dual‑settlement structure. At the first closing, the seller receives a majority of their equity upfront. Then, once the home sells to a market buyer, the seller receives a second payment equal to the net sales price from the market buyer minus the amount already paid at the first closing. Both programs are designed to deliver convenience, ease, and certainty. For sellers whose primary goal is certainty, QuickBuy also offers the Lock program. For a small fee, QuickBuy Lock keeps the QuickBuy offer open for up to 150 days, giving sellers the peace of mind of having a qualified cash backup offer if their home does not sell traditionally.
Bottom line: if you’re trying to pry your aging parents out of their current house for their own good and move them to a new place, being able to relieve them of all of the grief, work, uncertainty, and anxiety inherent in selling their long time residence couldn’t be easier with an assist from the QuickBuy guys.
